Birchmount Stadium, Home of the Robbie

It will seem petty to most of you, but I have come to the conclusion, after much soul searching, that for the third election cycle in a row, I am picking against George W. Bush.

I know, I know... I've tried this twice before and was burned both times. I just have a hunch that between a sub-25% approval rating and the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, I'm going to try for third time lucky. Doesn't seem like much to have in the arsenal when Dick Cheney's on the other side, but I think there's limit to the number of dissenters he can strangle to death using only his mind.

As a note of perspective, I'd just like to take a little break in the Addled Geezer War Hero vs. Secret Gay Muslim Nazi narrative of '08 to reflect on just what it is we're missing, as a country, as a result of the last eight years.

1) 2,411.82 points on the Dow Jones Industrial average (as of end of trading Monday)

2) The ability to be shocked at a paltry $5 trillion national debt. (That's right, we doubled down, bitches!)

3) Lots of banks and hedge fund-y type financial hoodoo BS his dad warned us about.

4) Most of the value of your house.

5) Two gigantor skyscrapers in NYC.

6) A sizeable percentage of the people in those gigantor skyscrapers.

7) Running annual budget surpluses.

8) Skinny Al Gore.

9) A major American automaker (if we can squeeze it in under the wire!)

10) 4,000+ U.S. military service members in Iraq.

11) The $20 gas-tank fill-up.

12) Gilligan.

13) About a million Iraqis, give or take.

14) The moral authority to confront dictators like Saddam Hussein with any kind of international credibility as to what our goals and methods are or will be.

15) That nice non-Nazi pope guy everyone seemed to like so much.

16) Wonder Bread (southern California only)

17) A whole entire major American fucking city.

18) And, just for good measure, probably his own party.

I was going to give him credit for ushering us through our difficult and embarrassing boy band period, but it turns out he fucked that one up, too.

The one thing I will say he gave us, should the national poll numbers hold up to election day one week from Tuesday (tomorrow, as I write this): landslide mandate unity. That's right: nothing brings Americans together quite so much as the ability to turn to something or someone, as one nation, and say clearly, with one voice: "You suck."

We're a cynical, surly people. But it can be all manner of running-with-scissors fun when we can find a reason to be cynical and surly together.

So it's not without some wistful sadness that I say I predict George W. Bush will not prevail in next week's election. Goodbye, sir, and I thank you. Your total inability to achieve any kind of positive goal for your consitutents has given us the kind of fraternal bond we haven't seen since the Macarena.

Too Many Mutha'uckas 'Ucking With My Shi'

I can finally, officially say that after this extended, roughly 119-month-long election cycle, I am finally free. I voted.

That's right, Barack Obama could forward every single dime of his $150 million September fundraising windfall directly to my bank account and it would have no discernible effect on my electoral participation. John McCain could spend the entirety of his campaign warchest advertising my new-ish blog venture* and it wouldn't sway me. It couldn't. My vote has already been cast.

Normally, I'm very serious about playing it close to the vest, maintaining the sanctity of the secret ballot, but seeing as a) this blog is cloaked in a veil of impenetrible secrecy, shrouded in a very shroudy thing indeed, smothered in secret sauce and b) I have nothing else to write about, I will tell you:

I voted for John McCain.

Now look, I'm sure that was something of a shock to most of you. You probably can't imagine what might have possessed me to do something so ridiculous.

It may have been that I was confused by the butterfly ballot as the result of my Jewish-grandmother glaucoma, I forgot a dose of my Paxil which prompted me to try slow Suicide by Electoral Franchise, pure vote for comedy purposes knowing that my state is going to go huge for That One anyway...

Well, rest assured, readers, no one was more shocked than I to find out I'd voted for Ole Hernia Truss. But it turns out that we still use trusty Diebold voting machines to cast our early ballots out in these parts.

Plus, consider, if there is going to be some kind of shaky business with vote counting, this is the sophisticated Los Angeles exurb that recently brought you this national news story. So really I shouldn't have been surprised when I punched in all my pinko preferences for offices and propositions (the black guy, free abortions, mandatory gay marriage for everyone, etc.), and then my state-law-required paper ballot print-out said that I had not only voted for Planecrash McGee and his redneck valkyrie running mate, but I also voted in favor of a welfare-to-work-camp pilot program, immediate deporation for all illegal immigrants AND discretionary "undesirables" and I'd written in Ronald Reagan for State Insurance Commissioner.

Ah well. I'd file a complaint, but really, all our officials out here are elected by the same system. Who'd listen?

It's OK though, I don't really vote for the purposes of making my voice heard as part of an empowered populace, exercising the right won for me by the blood of men and women braver than I over generations long dead.

Really, I vote for the "I VOTED!" sticker. It's the only way to innoculate yourself against the sanctimony of "Hey, you don't vote, you can't complain" guy.

Stick it in your ass, DiCaprio! How you gonna come at me now?



* = I'm thinking two or three lines in the Portland, Maine, PennySaver.

Fever!

Hmm, so I just dropped the two oldest kids off at school, parked the youngest in front of Sesame Street and now, here I am, all alone on a perfectly serviceable autumn morning in Southern California, with the whole world of intellectual, personal and entertainment options laid out before my toil-free feet and here I am... in front of the computer.

Did I really used to do this every day?

It just, you know, seems like a lot of work.

But the great and goodly fortune of epidemiolgical inevitability that is kindergarten has afforded me this one-day reprieve from the shackles of the Protestant Work Ethic, which is quite a relief, especially considering that I'm not Protestant. As a Catholic, my natural Work Ethic tendencies tend to run in the more episcopal "You all do what I say without question, on pain of eternal damnation, while I sit here draped in ostentatious finery," but, sadly, the Puritans got here first, so we're stuck conforming to all this dour, dogged drudgery. All we Catholics got was Maryland, which is a) no longer dominated exclusively by Catholics and b) weird and snakey-looking. Not much of a base from which to launch the cultural re-education of a people.

In my old blogging mode, I would have had nearly-instantaneous Presidential Debate reaction. These days? Didn't even watch the thing. Apparently John McCain was feisty and spunky in the beginning, took a little nap in the middle, then was all cranky and bug-eyed when he woke up. I didn't have to watch the debate to follow that storyline. I have a grandpa.

Well, actually that's not fair. John McCain is much older than grandpa.

Now, I'm going to indulge markedly non-Protestant non-stick-to-it-iveness and go watch Ironman with my sick boy. That's the other thing about being Catholic: we can watch PG-13 movies with 5-year-olds. We believe in Free Will, which means we do these kids a favor by corrupting them as much as we can before they attain the Age of Reason. That way their total acceptance of all the cockamamie vagaries of our show-business faith will be that much more dramatic. It's our own version of rumspringa, except without the meth.

...Save the World

With a title like "Ochlocracy in Action" and a sobriquet as fancy as the one I've adopted here, it seems to me that I should have some kind of mission statement as to what this whole endeavor is about. In order to be consistent with the presentational theme, it should be someting high-minded, politically aware, non-frivolous, in the interest of the common weal.

Ochlocracy as a concept affects everyone because it is, in nearly literal terms, everyone. The goal here should be to elevate discourse beyond partisanship and reflex rancor; to be the mirror of societal self-reflection that allows us to see our own flaws and failings, goading us all to epiphany and action in the direction of the Hegelian moral right.

To that end, I feel compelled to implore you all to stop watching Heroes on NBC.

According to the declining numbers I've seen, many of you are well ahead of the curve there, and bravo, I say.

For the rest of you, I feel it's my social duty to point out just how much that show sucks, not just in the specific sense of bad ideas poorly executed, but as a symptom of societal decay that only we, as a collective force of action, can choose to stop.

I know many of us feel certain sense of loyalty to that show, going back to the first season, which, as I recall now, did not suck. It was actually compelling, as many new shows are, because they are forced to say something original--or at least say something that's been said a million times before, packaged in an artificially original way that we can at least appreciate for the effort--in order to get on the air in the first place.

It has become clear to me, however, that the writers of that show had exactly one year's worth of ideas and now are subjecting our mass media society not just to another bad television show, but yet another symptom of cultural rot that threatens to destroy us as a nation.

The first season of Heroes was artfully paced, expertly structured, with rare, judicious sprinklings of CGI-flavored sci-fi mumbo jumbo to keep things interesting.

The best part about it was that, even though we knew what the end was going to be, we didn't know how it was going to get there, or even, really, if it would exactly as suggested. Because of that, we could tolerate the execrable dialogue spoken by a cast of actors who, by rights, should have risen at most to the level of sitcom supporting character or, perhaps, infomercial fake testimonial interviewee.

Over the next half season (writer's strike) and the beginning of this one, it's entirely clear that the people in charge have run out of ideas entirely. Now every year, it's "we must save the world from the Dreaded MacGuffin of Doom!" which we know PRECISELY AND WITH CERTAINTY that they will and how they will.

It's the same exact problem that makes 24 such an awful show after one or two seasons of such promise. Everyone knows what every season of 24 will entail: initial threat, investigation hampered by internal treachery and/or incompetence, the president is in some way incapacitated, initial threat faced and defeated followed by BAD GUYS GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS (oh noes!!11!), moral dilemma involving Jack Bauer killing non-bad-guy(s) to save the day.

Yeah, great. Let's have eight seasons of that.

But this kind of thing persists because just enough people watch these shows in order to justify the selling price of advertising against their production budgets.

The problem is that American television is, if only in terms of volume, the world standard. Other English language countries, the UK for example, run short seasons (like 6 episodes) over the course of a few years and then MOVE ON.

We regularly crank out 22 to 25 episodes of every show, regardless of content, which means it's easier for Australia and the UK, not to mention our non-Anglophone, literate friends who can handle subtitles, to fill in empty time by importing American shows instead of producing their own total crap.

This is what we've been doing since the beginning of television, but the degradation of quality in the Heroes and 24 mold have had serious geopolitical repercussions. North Korea will not take our anti-nuclear weapons stance seriously. Why? I would argue because Milo Ventimiglia makes us non-credible as a negotiating partner.

Meanwhile, Arrested Development is cancelled after 53 episodes because people would rather watch foreign import karaoke shows, while at the same time, we are in serious danger of, less than a month from now, surrendering the last bit of international political credibility we have left. This is not a coincidence.

The only thing standing between us and total social collapse is me and Jump the Shark. The bees have neither and look what's happened to them.

Sticky Wicket

There are loads of metrics we could use to determine what a presidential candidate will mean to his country, if elected. The hope is that, before we get to inauguration day, we've sussed out, at least to some extent, what kind of character s/he possesses and, therefore, what we can expect in terms of policy and competence in execution of said policy.

There is voting history, time in service, pre-political employment, ideological affiliation, temperament, even choice of spouse, spending habits, medical history or, in the case of John McCain, cutting off a leg and counting the rings therein. It would be useful, I think, to judge just how many dry seasons and forest fires he's endured and how, exactly, he weathered them.

What people usually forget to mention--and I'm grateful to the McCain campaign for helping illuminate this most helpful point of inquiry--is the critical issue: What's the candidate's middle name?

Amidst all this talk of polling breakouts and swing-state dominance and potential landslides, we're reminded of the sobering reality that Barack Obama's middle name? Hussein.

Just think: we came thisclose--just one short month away--from accidentally electing to the highest office in the Free World, a known terrorist.


Or maybe an an English cricketer. Or the Prime Minister of Malaysia, which I'm pretty sure constitutes political bigamy. Or the king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Anyway, doesn't matter. Probably a terrorist because they're all Muslimy. That English dude seems benign, but what's more creeping and foreign than cricket? It's got a tea interval, for Christ's sake. Is gay baseball less threatening than bombs? I ask you.

The obvious answer to pointing out the terror-nymic secret underlying the Obama nomination is for the Obama people to point out that John McCain's middle name? Sidney.

We can infer three things from this: 1) Secret agent of the Australian government. 2) So old he uses the archaic spelling for the city of "Sydney." 3) Girl.

Of course that last one could go either way, i.e. he's so tough he's made it this far sharing a name normally reserved for girls AND the title of a Tony Randall sitcom about a gay dude.

This of course begs the question: why was Tony Randall always playing a gay dude? And opposite Rock Hudson all the time, which... you know... irony. Meanwhile Tony was so straight and virile his own self, he was out there fathering children (by women!) at the age of approximately 326.

Which makes him a contemporary of John McCain (as I bring it full circle), lover of boomerangs, Outback steakhouses and barbie shrimps. Doubt me if you want to, but you pay close attention the next time you see John McCain at a didgeridoo recital and see if he doesn't well up.

Dismiss it if you want to, but just consider: one of the most popular sporting pastimes in Australia? Cricket. The Russell Crowe/Nicole Kidman vanguard has softened us up with their roles of raw masculinity, delicate femininity and noble, quiet dignity and grace. The last tumbler is about to fall with the McCain stealth candidacy, when baseball, our sport where lumberjack manliness is so necessary one NEEDS to inject themselves with EXTRA testosterone just to compete, is threatened by a sport where men wear sweater vests and white pants.

And we all know what white pants means.

Vigilance, people. Vigilance.

Counter Programming

Blog readers, being the socially conscious, politically active, intemperate partisan wingnut hacks that we are, are probably thinking mostly about tonight's debate between Joe Biden and That Other Person, the one with the boobies.

But we already know how that's going to go, don't we? She's going to come out a-blazin' with all kinds of deeply drilled-in facts, look shockingly competent in short sound-bites in the way only beauty queen/sportscaster/governor ladies can, stick to the script (since the format is not what you'd call free-wheeling), declare victory and depart the field.

Meanwhile Joe Biden, under the immense strain not to come off like a condescending prick, in a fit of misdirected frustration, punches Gwen Ifill in the face.

I know it's cheap blogging to basically repeat the conventional wisdom, but there it is.

As a service to you, I would like to, alternately, touch on something other than the VP debate and instead warn you, dear readers, about the false allure of that geopolitical hussy, Scandinavia.

Sure, it SEEMS like the place to go. Physically, it's thousands of miles of unspoiled coastlines, spectacular harbors, vast sub-Arctic highlands teeming with majestic reindeer herds and charming-yet-modern cities glowing with an intoxicating combination of brawny, global-information-age dynamism and measured Old World permanence.

Socially, we've all heard about their world-standard socialized medical system, remarkably stable, benign coalition governments, legal tolerance bordering on enthusiasm for recreational drug use and the unparalleled non-invasive religious freedom to be absolutely any kind of Lutheran you want.

Anything you want to do, you can do in Scandinavia, so long as "what you want to do" between, say, September and June is cross-country skiing.

And still? They have Bikini Teams.

Scandinavia is so known for its freedoms, it's the recognized world leader in gender reassignment surgery. In the land around the Arctic Circle, there is so much freedom, even your paired XX or XY chromosomes aren't allowed to tell you what to do.

Just know, however, that it isn't all what it seems.

Nobody wants to talk about the dark side of Scandinavia. The physical isolation, the difficulty in integrating any outsider in such a genetically pure society... nobody wants to talk about those things. If you look just under the surface, you'll see the secrets lurking in the shadows. The cabalistic ritual gluttony of the smörgåsbord, the deep shame of a universally impenetrable accent, the epidemic rates of crippling fjord addiction, the pleasure hunting of kindergarten children for sport...

Oh, I'm sorry. Had you not heard about that last one? Turns out it's actually 100% true. They even practice it on the internet, the same way gang members in this country, as we all know, practice gang violence playing Grand Theft Auto. The Finns only took that game down AFTER someone went and actually shot up a school.

So you see, they really do have shame. In that respect at least, we can infer that they don't compare favorably to Amsterdam.

What the fetishization of school violence shows us, though, is that in the end, Scandinavia has a little bit of America in it, not that far from the surface. And we didn't even have to look that hard to find it.

Even if John McCain wins, then, it's OK to stay here. I know, you're thinking, "What about Thailand?" That's an issue for another post.